I’m eating musical cake which is good as I like cake and Skittish – a collection of Minneapolis musicians led by pied pipers of power pop Jeff Noller and Vonnie Kyle- are the bakers of this particular confection called “The Perfect Shade of Green”.
Power pop takes many forms and over these two CDs, Skittish confidently and charmingly rummage through the civilised musical melting pot of the last fifty years. Maybe even longer as there were times that you could detect the knowing smirk of Noël Coward in the underlying knives are sharp and so is my wit subtext. Not that today has been forgotten either as “Potential” could easily be hijacked for piano by Ben Folds and “Jagged Stars” could likewise be used to regenerate both a Simon and a Garfunkel. If you like catchy intelligent pop songs then you are most certainly in the right place.
The second CD of this set doesn’t float the boat at high tide as often as numero uno does but nonetheless it does so much better than most bands do. The sinuous charms of “Bump In The Night” show that Vonnie Kyle is more than capable of causing a grown man to sweat (somewhat) and, while “Pink Noise” is rather more anodyne, you don’t have to wait long for something rather more spectacular to come along (s it does with the sublime “Bring Out Your Dead”).
It is a bold move for a distinctly unknown band to put out a double album and it is indeed commendable that Skittish have managed to maintain such a high standard throughout. One more thing - I reckon that I could take a dozen of these songs and turn them into the original soundtrack to a fiendishly camp musical. In every great power pop song there is a show tune waiting to get out.
Available from CD Baby.